Radiolab - In the No Part 2
Episode Date: October 19, 2018In the year since accusations of sexual assault were first brought against Harvey Weinstein, our news has been flooded with stories of sexual misconduct, indicting very visible figures in our public l...ife. Most of these cases have involved unequivocal breaches of consent, some of which have been criminal. But what have also emerged are conversations surrounding more difficult situations to parse – ones that exist in a much grayer space. When we started our own reporting through this gray zone, we stumbled into a challenging conversation that we can’t stop thinking about. In this second episode of ‘In the No’, radio-maker Kaitlin Prest joins us for a conversation with Hanna Stotland, an educational consultant who specializes in crisis management. Her clients include students who have been expelled from school for sexual misconduct. In the aftermath, Hanna helps them reapply to school. While Hanna shares some of her more nuanced and confusing cases, we wrestle with questions of culpability, generational divides, and the utility of fear in changing our culture. Advisory: This episode contains some graphic language and descriptions of very sensitive sexual situations, including discussions of sexual assault, consent and accountability, which may be very difficult for people to listen to. Visit The National Sexual Assault Hotline at online.rainn.org for resources and support. This episode was reported with help from Becca Bressler and Shima Oliaee, and produced with help from Rachael Cusick. Special thanks to Ben Burke and Jackson Prince. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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Before we start, a quick heads up, this episode contains some graphic language and descriptions of very sensitive sexual situations, including discussions of sexual consent and accountability, which might be very difficult for some people to listen to.
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Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod. This is Radio Lab. Today we have part two of a three-part series that we're calling in the no. No as in NO. We were inspired to do this after hearing a set of stories on a show called The Heart produced by Caitlin Prest. Last week we played excerpts of that series. And if you haven't heard last week's episode, I would encourage you to go back and listen. Because the stories that Caitlin told, which got some
very intense reactions from our listeners online all over the map. However you feel, I mean,
those stories that she made are a very striking personal view of consent from the inside.
Now, it just so happens that Caitlin produced those stories in the spring of 2017, which is the
spring just before all the accusations started hitting the news. First against Harvey Weinstein
and then congressmen like Al Franken, actress like
Kevin Spacey and then comedians.
And then in many cases, the very people, very men who were reporting about those stories.
And much of what made it into the news was pretty clear cut, like criminal cases or accusations of clear breaches of consent.
But then we started to hear about the cases that were harder, not explicitly criminal, more nuanced.
and that gray zone, which Caitlin was in many ways exploring in her piece,
it occurred to us like this is a conversation we're all trying to have right now.
So what we started doing in the wake of listening to her stories was doing a series of interviews of our own with people all over the map
who are thinking and rethinking consent in interesting ways.
We'll play a couple over the next two weeks.
But we ran into one particular interview.
Let's see if it's working.
Caitlin, are you there?
Yes, I'm here.
Hey, hey, I did it.
You did it.
That we could not stop thinking about.
In fact, it created a lot of really difficult conversations internally.
And so we just kind of decided, why don't we play this thing relatively raw, which we don't do very often.
But let's just put it out more or less how it happened in all of its flaws.
Caitlin, Caitlin, can you hear Hannah?
Yes, it's Hana.
Hannah.
Okay, sorry.
Yeah.
Caitlin, could you hear Hannah?
I'm speaking. Can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you.
Okay, sweet. Thanks for coming in, both of you guys.
Thank you. Really glad to be here.
Okay, so since I've already pronounced your name incorrectly, can you tell me who you are and how to say your name and what you do?
Sure. My name is Hannah Stotland. I'm an independent consultant. I work on, sorry, I'm an independent educational consultant, and I specialize in educational crisis management.
And we called up Hannah because she has a very particular.
vantage point on this whole set of questions.
When I see a unfamiliar number from a distant area code on my phone, if I can, I pick that up.
And it happens quite regularly that I pick it up and I just hear sobbing.
That's a mom whose kid just got expelled.
So that happens regularly.
Like daily, weekly?
More like once or twice a month.
Often the calls are coming from moms whose sons have been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct.
I got my first two calls on that topic in January of 2014.
And since then, it's grown and grown and grown.
And about a third of my work now is students who are involved with Title IX in one way or another.
Title IX is a federal law that deals with, among other things, sexual harassment, sexual violence on college campuses.
What Hana will do when she gets these calls is she'll work with these young men who've been accused to get them back into school.
either the school they were in, but more often it means transferring to a different school.
So families hire me to help their kids get into college or grad school usually.
I think it is a good thing when people in general, even people who may have done something very bad,
who want education, can continue to get education as long as they're seeking it honestly.
But what if you're then just deferring the problem to some other campus?
I mean, let's say there's a guy that's victimized somebody, and then you help them get to another college where maybe they do it again.
Well, they'd be in the community one way or another, and I think this is an area where I see a lot of problems with classism and probably racism too, where we're so concerned about that accused person being on another college campus.
If he isn't on a college campus, where do you think he's going to be?
because he's not going to jail.
The students that we're talking about,
typically the police don't even get called,
but if they do,
they come and see the evidence
and say this evidence is so thin,
you know, we're not even going to impose charges.
So say, you know, okay, well, he's not going to college anymore.
He's going to work at McDonald's.
And so if there's a risk to the fellow people at McDonald's,
then we just don't care
because they're not the upper middle class white women
who were actually worried about
on the college campuses.
And I have misgivings about the idea that the college students are special.
That community needs special attention that other young adults don't need.
So just so that I know that I have your point of view that I understand it,
it's that you don't, it's not that you don't think that some people should be expelled sometimes.
Oh, sure they should.
It's more that, yeah, okay.
But I feel very comfortable with the idea that people who want to continue their education
ought to be able to make their case for why they want to continue it.
What I do is help them talk about what happened.
So if you're interested in covering it up or hiding it, there's no reason to hire me.
I help you have that hard conversation or write that difficult essay about what went wrong.
Even if you feel you were wrongly accused, you were railroaded by the school, you better find unwise choices that you made, selfish choices that you made.
There are not a lot of these cases where I think, well, you handled everything perfectly.
You didn't make any risk-preferring choices.
There's nothing you could change to keep this from happening to you in the future.
You still have to tell a story about mistakes that you made and how you're working to fix them.
How does that go?
I mean, do you find that people will maintain that, like, will they sort of hold on to the idea that they did have consent, even if the other person says that they didn't?
Oh, certainly.
And I'm not trying to change.
People will.
I'm not necessarily trying to change their mind about whether they had consent.
I mean, they were there and I was not.
It's interesting.
Do you see in a scenario where you have both sides of the story, what's the usual difference?
It depends.
There's a few cases where the stories just are incompatible.
But there are most of my cases, the dispute is narrow.
Everybody agrees that the encounter was generally consensual.
but either the consent to all of it was withdrawn
or, you know, according to the accuser,
or there was consents to acts A and B but not C.
And C just happened before they knew it
and there wasn't a conversation about it
and that one party feels that C was a rape
or that, no, I agree, I acted like I wanted this the whole time
and maybe even I said yes, but in retrospect, I was too drunk or high.
And that consent was no good.
It nullifies the consent.
At this point in the conversation, we talked a little bit about, like, the different kinds of consent and what works, like affirmative consent, where it's about clear permission, often verbal permission that can be withdrawn at any time, which Hana says she is all 4,000 percent.
The question is, if you don't do it, is it rape?
and that's the dichotomy that I object to
or I'm a skeptic about I should say
I mean if again if people can show me that this works
then I'm interested but when you say
I guess that's the thing like when you say
if people can show me if this works
can you sort of unpack what you mean by that
like let me give you
it seems so clear to me that it does work
I don't know
so let me tell you a few stories
so I'm just sort of curious yeah let me tell you a few stories
There's a couple that I can give more identifying information about because the case is in litigation now, and so that's on the public record.
And the fact that I'm involved in the case is on the public record, so I can say a few more things.
So I had a student, he and a girl wearing his room after a party, they didn't know each other well.
He touched her private parts, and there was vaginal penetration with his fingers.
both parties agree that he asked for and got affirmative verbal consent.
He said, do you like this?
And she said, yes, and she faked an orgasm.
Both parties are telling the exact same story.
And he was found responsible for sexual assault because she said, I didn't mean it.
I said, yes, I was enjoying it in order to get it over with faster.
I wanted a graceful way to leave his room.
and I thought making him think I was having an orgasm
would help me get out of there more gracefully
without being rude.
And he was suspended for two and a half years.
I'll let you finish.
I'll let you finish and then I'll say what I think.
No, I mean, you know, so we, so.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what I'm seeing in practice.
You know, it's other other cases that I've seen
is someone who, basically,
my student is a big black guy.
You know, well over six feet tall,
a lot of muscles, he's an athlete.
And it's undisputed that he and the accuser
were in her dorm room together to hook up.
They took off all their clothes.
And she touched his genitals
and performed oral sex on him.
And she said that she did that because she was fearful once they were both naked.
And she felt that the situation was so overwhelming that she had to reach out and touch him
and then reach out and use her mouth on him.
and the school decided in that situation
that the only thing that had gone wrong
was that there wasn't a verbal confirmation
and so if you go in somebody's dorm room
and both of you take off your clothes
and she
touches you and places your penis in her mouth
when you're not speaking
she has not conveyed consent
which I think most of us would feel yeah yeah I guess from my from my point of view
like the rules are are set up in a way that that kind of protect the person who feels violated
like it like I guess to me I agree there's a difference between there's a difference which like I mean
sorry well we're not supposed to be concerned about who feels violated we're supposed to be concerned about who was
violated. Yeah, but I mean, I guess the person who was violated, I mean, if they feel violated,
then I would argue that they are, they were violated. So if they feel violated, the other person,
what I'm saying is that, like, I think that having affirmative consent be a rule that's, that's,
that's followed and taken seriously when it comes to, like, legal stuff. It just, it protects that
ambiguity. So you think that people should go to jail for not getting,
the verbal yes?
Well, I mean, I think that's definitely complicated.
What?
I think it's complicated, but I think that it makes it so that the person who was violated
feels violated is the one who's always protected and who's the one who's always in the right.
And I think that that's a good thing.
Yeah, I don't agree with you about that.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't think they're always in the right.
I don't think they're always in the right.
I don't think they're always in the right, but I think that it's safer to assume.
that they're always in the right.
Well, say for whom.
There's going to be a very small margin of people who are not,
but I feel like it's important to...
But how do we know how...
That's just my point of view.
Well, first of all, how do we know how small that margin is?
I don't know how small it is.
I mean, I'm thinking to various, various encounters that my students have had,
for example, where they both agree that they were having consensual intercourse.
and they both agree that the consent was withdrawn during the intercourse and that the intercourse
stopped. The dispute is about how rapidly it stopped.
And so, and there isn't, you know, in that case, I just, I just hesitate to say, and again,
and it seems clear on paper, the absolutes of that, well, you control your body. The second you
convey, for example, start to cry during sex. All right, well, then, okay, I would assume nonverbally
that this should stop or, you know, we should make sure. And it did stop, but, you know, did that
take two seconds, five seconds, 30 seconds? And that from the moment of, there's a
The problem, the other problem is there's no, you know, what should you reasonably be aware of?
And I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that person A's feelings determine whether person B's behavior was rape or not.
Because.
But we're not always calling it rape.
I mean, sometimes it's not called rape.
It's called sexual assault.
You know, sexual assault, I feel like that's a really important distinction that like the terms, even sexual assault is not, is not adequate.
quit, you know, because there are so many different gradations. Yeah, absolutely. But I don't think,
I don't think, like, I don't think, I don't think, I personally, I do, I do think that if someone,
someone's feelings should determine whether person B has assaulted them, you know, like, I think,
even thinking about, like, when someone cries in the middle of sex, you know, like, talking about,
talking about, like, is it, is it five seconds? Is it 10 seconds? Is it 30 seconds? Like, what are all the
things that happened leading up to that moment.
Well, because he disputes, he says, I stopped as soon as I realized she was crying.
Yeah.
And she says.
But she says, I was, I was crying for like 25 seconds, let's say, 30 seconds.
And so that period between when I started crying and when he realized I was crying.
But even like, to me, when I hear a story like that, I think that there was actually a lot of other, there were probably a lot of other, there were probably a lot of.
lot of other things leading up to that moment that were not perceived, you know, or that the reason
why she's coming forward and saying that this was an assault, this was a violation, there's probably
a lot, there's a much, an unseen architecture to that, to that story. That is really complicated,
I guess. Like, I don't think that someone would just come out and be like, I cried for 30 seconds
and then, and you didn't, you didn't stop. Like, it's probably a lot, it goes, it runs much deeper than
that there was something there's something unnameable happening in that room and she sort of hinges
that unnameable feeling of a violation on this oh I agree that they feel violated it seems trivial
when you talk about it out loud but she's trying to say something was not right here you know I agree
yeah so I very much agree it's just it's complicated I'm sort of just trying to get into the
complicated area of it right I think that area we agree
on a whole lot that I don't dispute at all. Even in my cases where I have the most doubt about
what happened, I don't dispute that the accuser feels violated. I think that's true.
They usually convince me. They usually convince that if she feels violated, she is violated.
Because there's all kinds of reasons besides being sexually assaulted that a person might feel
violated. So I mean, I'll talk about one instance for myself, you know, the people who have
broken my heart when I was in love with people. And, you know, there was a breakup where I got
treated like dirt when we were in love and, like, knew each other's families and all of that.
And then, you know, basically ghosted me and then dumped me on a phone call 10 months in.
I felt extremely violated.
I can't put into words how bad he made me feel.
And how it colored my memory of every interaction we'd had for 10 months and Christmas together with my family in Hawaii.
And calling into question, was he lying to me then?
I feel very violated by his actions.
It's probably not a word I would have come up with,
but I feel unbelievably, you know, I'm happy and married now.
It's all good.
You know, I should not have ended up with him.
But especially at the time, I mean, that was an experience that permanently changed me.
I'm not the same person I was before that heartbreak.
And he didn't sexually assault me.
You know, it was awful what he did.
And it just makes sense to me that people could be unbelievably deeply hurt by all kinds of behavior that isn't sexual assault.
I can see that.
I can see, I can see, I can see that.
But I guess I feel like, you know, what we're doing right now is working against history, you know.
Like, I think that we're trying.
to make progress on on this issue of sexual assault and the much larger issue of the the imbalance
of power as it is distributed between the genders like right can you ever really as a woman and this is
I don't know if I fully agree with what I'm about to say but it's just I'm just posing it as a
as a philosophical question um you know if you're if you're taught from birth to define your pleasure
based on someone else and someone else's pleasure,
how can you even know what you want or don't want in those private moments?
You know, and like how do we restore that balance, you know?
Yeah, I think a lot of what you're describing is a,
what I'm seeing as a generational divide in feminism.
I don't know how old you are.
I'm 42.
Yeah, I'm 30, yeah.
Yeah, women who are my age and older.
I tend to agree with me.
And the women who are college age are in their 20s now often don't.
And the disconnect stems, I feel like when you were describing how because of societal pressures and training from birth and all that,
when the man was naked in my room, I could not do anything but give him a blow job.
I could not say no.
And I would say you did not say no.
And there may be situations where we agree that this is a can't situation.
But I don't see it as positive for my feminism.
To say, well, the woman is just helpless there.
She has no agency.
They put her in a pink dress.
So now she has to give a blowjob.
I understand that. And I think that's a really important point of view. But I also, I guess, people have done research about the fact that like young girls define how good sex was based on how much they perceive the other person enjoying it. And, and even something as simple as that creates a power dynamic. And I feel like I'm not really seeing the men that I know, the young men that I know. I'm not seeing them understanding the power that they have.
that's really easy to abuse, you know?
Like, how do you fix that?
That's what it kind of all comes down to.
And, like, there has to be some kind of consequences
if we're going to see a change.
We're going to take a quick break.
And we'll come right back to this conversation
between Caitlin Press, Hannah Stottlin, and myself.
Just a moment.
Hello, my name's Aaron Davies.
I'm calling from Tempe, Arizona.
Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.
More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.
I'm Chad Abumrah. This is Radio Lab. We're back with the second episode in a three-part series
that we're doing, inspired by, in collaboration with Caitlin Prest. It's called In the Know,
and we're going to jump back into the conversation that Caitlin and I were having with Hauna Stotland.
But before we do, I want to bring in some other voices.
because
I can sit where you're sitting
and I just place you
because that way I can just like
swivel in the mic or ad.
As we were working on this series,
I mean it really was an exploration for us.
One of the things that happened along the way
is we convene groups of college students
in different spots across the country.
If we, if there are...
Groups of college-age men and women.
I was with the men.
My colleagues back a wrestler
and Chima Oliang are with the women.
We're going to hear more from the women next week.
I want to play just a bit of the men
because when Hana and Caitlin and I were talking,
it called to mind something that I heard a lot in these conversations.
You have to take a leap at some point.
You have to take, like, you're talking to this person, you're making eye contact, whatever.
And, like, you can ask, like, can I kiss you?
And, like, they say yes.
But, like, at the same time, sometimes you just go for it.
And, like, that's where it gets iffy.
I guess my question is whether, like, sacrificing that is what we need to do for no one to get raped.
you know, or no one to get raped in these non-super malicious scenarios.
Like maybe what we have to give up is just you're looking to our eyes, the sun's rising,
you're like, hello, would you, like, can I record you on my cell phone of you saying
you're down to make out right now?
You know, I mean, and as I say, you know, that's something I guess I'm willing to give up
if that's what's being asked and if that actually solves the issue.
But I just think that we're coming to a point where that might be the line.
By the way, the thing he's talking about, that is actually an app that exists.
We talked to the guy who made it.
But what he and other guys were saying was that they're uneasy.
They still feel somehow caught between those old, gendered expectation that it's the man's job to pursue and the world that we're in now, which seems to not want that.
But maybe not entirely not not want that.
They're not sure.
And a lot of them worry that maybe they've already crossed the line without knowing it.
It's always in the back of my mind.
Like, I've hooked up with a girl that's, like, instigated it.
Like, while having sex, she decides that, like, she doesn't want to do.
Like, she's going to go home.
Gets up, leaves.
Okay.
You know, like, then what, then if the next day she decides that,
or she realizes that, like, if she didn't want to do that,
maybe after the fact, then it'd just be my truth versus her.
I've definitely hooked up with people where they were very drunk.
It was the first time we'd hooked up.
No one never was like, oh, that was not okay or anything.
But in all those situations, I guarantee, based on myself, I was drunker than the person I was hooking up with.
But because I'm a man, that could be retrospectively, that could have been sexual assault, you know.
And that's definitely the biggest question I've given myself post this thing is like, wow, could it even be claimed?
Like, I don't think that I sexually assaulted someone at all.
I mean, given that, you know, one I asked, are you sure?
but that isn't even enough
because let's say alcohol
you know even if you get a vocal consent
if there's alcohol involved
so I guess that's where it gets interesting
I mean interesting not to make it cold but yeah
no matter what though even if
even if it end up that you did make a mistake
and someone was like that wasn't okay
what you did to be that or something
right say you're sorry
I'd be like I really need to understand that
you know and like you learn like we don't have to be
I don't think like be free like
be a good person I understand that
but if if somebody says like you sexually assault
to me. And if it's a situation like you're talking about where you both have been drunk and you say,
I'm sorry, is that not, I would be scared to say that because...
I'm sorry, because that's like you're admitting you're guilty, even if you don't think you are,
if you try to engage in a conversation like that. So just maybe like you don't say, I'm sorry,
you say, oh my God, like, please explain to me like how I did that or like what happened
because I was too drunk to even remember or like something. Like let's, it's not about being like a
And after listening to these guys and then having this conversation with Caitlin and Kana, I mean, for one, the things that they were afraid of were exactly the things that we were talking about.
And two, I started to think about the fear, that sort of ambient fear that was always in the room, in a sort of a different way.
Couldn't you argue there's something useful about the fear?
Because that fear might push these guys to address exactly what Caitlin was just saying.
It might push the guys to, you know, I mean, what I hear over and over again when I talk to, when I talk to students is that the women in a sexual encounter are thinking about 12 things and the guys are thinking about one thing, which is themselves, right?
They're just, they're not reading the room.
They're not reading their partner.
What's going to change that if not fear?
Like the fear that these guys feel right now could actually make them start to pay attention.
Make us, I should say, start to pay attention.
Yes, it might.
I certainly think of my essay writing support as a form of education, coaching how a student should handle a tough situation.
I'm not sure that making the consequence really bad is what makes it more likely that the behavior will change.
but I would love to see young men encouraged to go through the kind of analysis of their actions that mine do with me.
And I think it's a really positive process for them.
And I see what looks to me like greater insight.
Can I, I want to bring it back to the moment itself because a lot of what we're talking about,
on a macro level,
still has to be negotiated in these moments, right?
And you've talked about the idea of,
we need a reasonableness standard for the consensual moment.
So what does that mean to you?
So to me it means that communication needs to be in a shared language.
You know, if someone says to me in Russian,
that doesn't feel good,
I just don't speak that.
So is it reasonable to expect me to understand
what this person was conveying
in a language that I don't speak?
Like, I would consider crying to be a universal language.
Now, if it's dark
and you're not touching the person's face,
whatever, you might not realize immediately
that they are crying without, you know,
it's not wah-wak type crying.
It's just it's tears and emotion and clenched throat and all that.
How rapidly is it reasonable to expect that you perceive that communication, which it is communication?
And if you could see the person's face, then I'd say it's a very unambiguous communication.
Is it reasonable to think it might take you a minute to realize that this, my partner's feelings are totally,
totally changed. So there's a spectrum between saying, no, no, no, stop and expecting somebody
read your mind, right? There's a million different ways to convey that with different levels of
urgency and clarity. And I just think we should take into account what can we reasonably
expect him in this scenario to realize about her changed frame of mind?
Caitlin, what do you think? For me, I think a step forward is just being a way.
of the power dynamics that are happening in sex,
talking about them explicitly,
understanding what they are,
understanding the ways that they're fun,
the ways that they're pleasurable,
and being really open about those things.
And I think that, like, it all comes back to communication.
I mean, like, I really liked what you said, Hanna,
about the languages, you know,
figuring out how to speak each other's languages,
figuring out trust,
and also just, like, having there be less.
of a stigma around conversations, explicit, open, totally shameless conversations about sexuality
would bring us forward in massive, massive leaps around this stuff. And also just that, like,
that, like, I mean, I think the thing that I'm not seeing that I wish I did see was just giving a
shit, you know, like Karen, like having, like, like, you know, when somebody says, hey, that,
that experience sucked for me, having the other person be like, wow, let's talk about it. Are you
okay you know it's like I feel like so many situations would be would be would be solved if that was
the dynamic as opposed to what are you talking about like um the gas lighting all that stuff yeah anyway
that's my little man to yeah the work I do with some of the students um when I say so what do you
regret um and sometimes they're not sure they're like I really didn't attack her and I said but
do you regret is it ever your goal to get
into your bed with someone and have them walking away going, oh, I'm glad that's over.
And the guys are like, no, I don't want that. And I was like, well, that's what you got.
And we can dispute whether it was an assault or not. It is objectively the case that this person
had a bad experience with you. Everybody agrees on that. And if that wasn't what you wanted to
happen, then you probably have regret about that. I should have done something differently,
so it didn't come out that way.
I'm not telling them what they ought to want sexually,
but I do tell them to consider what they want sexually.
It is not, I want to preface this by saying,
I'm not saying that the training of men and women is symmetrical.
It's not.
But that some of them may realize, some of the men may realize,
you know what, I was told that men are supposed to like any kind of sexual contact
we can get from anyone anywhere, we're supposed to be happy about that.
And is that actually what I want or is that what people expect me to want?
And maybe I would prefer more of a, you know, loving, gentle kind of relationship.
Maybe I'm a man and that kind of model would actually work better for me than this conquest model.
It's interesting because, I mean, what I hear a lot coming out of the Me Too movement is that I hear a lot of women saying, guys, you need to do the work.
okay like this is this is largely your work to do right now um and i hadn't expected to hear you
talking about what you do as in some sense being a part of that like you are actually it seems
involved in some of the guys doing the work i mean like how to do the work is its own sort of can
of worms like who which is something we haven't really talked too much about but it is interesting
to hear that i wasn't expecting that to be the case and in a sense that
It's not necessarily my goal, but it may be necessary in order to achieve my goal, which is to help you advocate for your education.
You can't do that effectively unless you've been thoughtful about your past.
And my thesis is gray.
Help the kids see the gray.
And, you know, this is not a binary world we live in in terms of gender, in terms of communication.
and to some extent
I feel like we have to
work with the complexity
of what's in front of us
even if we wish it were black and white
and that would make our job a lot easier.
Yeah.
Caitlin, any final thoughts?
Amen. No.
I don't think so.
I guess
yeah, this has been really
great combo.
Loved it.
I want to thank Caitlin Prest
and Honestot
for sitting down to talk.
A few notes before we close.
If you have experienced sexual assault, there are resources out there to support you.
And the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-56-hope, that is 1-800-656-4-673,
can provide support and connect you to resources in your local area.
And also, one thing I do want to add is that this conversation, the reason we aired it without a ton of edits and amendment,
is that this was not meant to be a comprehensive take on anything.
This is one small piece of a must have larger conversation.
If anything, this was simply an attempt to hold a space for that continuing conversation.
Space where we can talk about this stuff, which we're going to continue to do next week.
And next week we'll end up in a place where that conversation happens very explicitly and very differently for better or worse.
In this episode, we had production help from Rachel Cusick.
Research and Reporting Help from Becca Bressler and Shima Oliai.
I'm Chad Abumrad.
Thanks for listening.
To play the message, press to a start of message.
Hi, I'm Caitlin. It's Caitlin. Hello.
Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler.
Bill & Chief is our director of sound design.
Maria Matasar Pia is our managing director.
Our staff includes Simon Adler, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, David Gevel, Bessel Habd, Bessel Hapt.
Oh, guys, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kilke, Robert Crulwich, and Amy Kippman, Pat Nefer, Nasser, Nasser, Melissa O'Donnell, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.
with help from Shima Oli,
Katz Laslow,
and Mo,
as Sidiomo.
Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.
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